Predictions 2013

Well, it is time for me to boldly go where angels fear to tread and make my predictions for 2013.

1. No new gun control legislation-Whenever either party wins a presidential victory for a second term, they begin feeling their oats and tend to overestimate both their popularity and their power. The Democrats are in that condition now, and I predict that the beginning of the path to what I anticipate will be a bad election year for Democrats in 2014 will be a bitter, and failed, attempt to pass new gun control legislation.

2. Recession-The Economy will slip back into a recession with the unemployment rate rising above nine percent by the end of the year.

3. Kerry seat-John Kerry will be confirmed as Secretary of State, God help us, and Scott Brown, the pinch hitter of the Senate, will win the special election for his seat in icy blue Massachusetts.

4. Virginia and New Jersey-The Republicans will retain the governorships in both New Jersey and Virginia.

5. Contraceptive Mandate-The contraceptive mandate will be ruled to be unconstituional on First Amendment religious freedom grounds. Go here to the Becket Fund, which has been waging the court fights across the country in regard to the mandate, for the decision of the DC Circuit Court of Appeals which begins setting the ground for ultimate Supreme Court review in 2014.

6. Tell all Books-A flood of tell all books by former insiders of the Obama administration will begin to hit the market.

7. Sad Cubbies-The Cubs will continue their 105 year streak of not winning the World Series.

8. Syria-The Syrian regime will be unseated and that will send shock waves throughout the Middle East. The Syrian state was the classic Arab one party dictatorship kept in power through a completely loyal military with no compunction about drowning any revolt in a sea of blood. When it falls look for uprisings throughout the Middle East. The prime prop of the Syrian regime, Iran, might well have a violent revolt that will make Syria look tame by comparison.

9. Israel v. Iran-The long delayed Israel-Iran war will occur unless a popular revolt occurs in Iran first.

10. Wrong again Don-McClarey will be wrong in some of his predictions.

China could be quite interesting Pedro. The Chinese have been risking war with Japan and the US over the Japanese Senkaku islands. I suspect this is largely for domestic purposes as the Chinese Communist party is confronted with an ailing economy and has zip ideas how to deal with it.

8. Syria-The Syrian regime will be unseated and that will send shock waves throughout the Middle East. The Syrian state was the classic Arab one party dictatorship kept in power through a completely loyal military with no compunction about drowning any revolt in a sea of blood. When it falls look for uprisings throughout the Middle East. The prime prop of the Syrian regime, Iran, might well have a violent revolt that will make Syria look tame by comparison.

Dunno. The closest analogues to the ‘classic Arab one party dictatorship’ in the Near East and adjacent areas would be the Muslim post-Soviet republics (bar Kyrgyzstan); however, the political life in these states appears to be influenced by a different set of currents than those in the rest of the Near East. Syria is quite atypical of the Near East nowadays. Nearly every other state the region is much more pluralistic (the Saudi monarchy being an exception) and only the military regime in the Sudan is sanguinary enough to be in the same category as the Assad crew. The Assad regime is not only a praetorian party-state but also the manifestation of the political subjection of the Syrian majority by the Alawite minority. Only the Tikriti/Ba’ath regime in Iraq (among all post-war regimes) had this characteristic.

My wager about Iran would be that the duration and level of violence would resemble more the fall of Mubarak in Egypt. Just my $0.02.

“My prediction: one of the many many Obama scandals will begin to stick.”

Probably. After a President is re-elected people begin to understand, even his partisans, that he is basically in the rear view mirror as far as future elections go, and there tends to be much less of a “protecting the quarterback” attitude, one of several reasons why most Presidential second terms tend to be a mess.

The fall of Assad is inevitable. I think that most of the region expects it, though. The shock waves will be minimal outside Lebanon and Turkey. Turkey could get really ugly. They’re experiencing their own demographic nightmare, as the secular, slightly-more-European population is getting outpaced by the crazies. If Syria falls, the Kurds will push hard for their own state, and Turkey may well respond with that special hospitality that they roll out for ethnic minorities.

Obama tell-all books? Interesting. I hadn’t thought about that. One thing that’s surprised me is the level of control that the Clintons have over the press. I thought they’d lost it 1998, but they’ve done amazing work rehabilitating Bill’s image, and criticism of Hillary is still unallowed. So I don’t see an anti-Obama backlash being permitted until those two give it the go-ahead.

I’m not sure if Mrs. Clinton will run in 2016. But the Democratic Party is going to have to be very careful over the next four years. I’m hoping that they trip up badly and have their party break out into the race war that they’ve been encouraging the rest of us to have for the past 4 / 50 / 150 / 224 years.

The problem with Obama Donald is not that he overestimates his popularity. Obamcare is proof that he is willing to ram a major piece of crap (I mean legislation) down the throats of the American people regardless of how unpopular it is.

Here’s another presdiction, Obama will continue to bully the repulican leadership and the republicans will continue to not fight back.